r at the last moment Albrecht
thrust his head out of the carriage window, and, waving his hand, cried,
"_A rivederci!_" I don't know whether they ever met again.

The whole scene, I confess, had affected me a good deal, in spite of
some of the absurdities by which it had been marked; and it was not
until I had been alone for some time, and silence had once more fallen
upon the Longarone _osteria_, that I awoke to the fact that it was _my_
carriage which the Marchese Marinelli had calmly appropriated to his own
use, and that there was no visible means of my getting back to Venice
that day. Great was my anger and great my dismay when the ostler
announced this news to me, with a broad grin, in reply to my order to
put the horses to without delay.

"But the marchese himself--how did he get here?" I inquired.

"Oh, he came by the diligence."

"And the count--the young gentleman?"

"On horseback, signore; but you cannot have his horse. The poor beast is
half dead as it is."

"Then will you tell me how I am to escape from your infernal town? For
nothing shall induce me to pass another night here."

"Eh! there is the diligence which goes through at two o'clock in the
morning!"

There was no help for it. I sat up for that diligence, and returned by
it to Mestre, seated between a Capuchin monk and a peasant farmer whose
whole system appeared to be saturated with garlic. I could scarcely have
fared worse in my bed at Longarone.

And so that was my reward for an act of disinterested kindness. It
is only experience that can teach a man to appreciate the ingrained
thanklessness of the human race. I was obliged to make a clean breast
of it to my sister, who of course did not keep the secret long; and for
some time afterward I had to submit to a good deal of mild chaff upon
the subject from my friends. But it is an old story now, and two of the
actors in it are dead, and of the remaining three I dare say I am the
only one who cares to recall it. Even to me it is a somewhat painful
reminiscence.

GONERIL, By A. Mary F. Robinson

CHAPTER I THE TWO OLD LADIES

On one of the pleasant hills round Florence, a little beyond Camerata,
there stands a house so small that an Englishman would probably take it
for a lodge of the great villa behind, whose garden trees at sunset
cast their shadow over the cottage and its terrace on to the steep white
road. But any of the country people could tell him that this, too, is a
_ca